Japan’s Immigration Harbinger

The famously insular nation is admitting more foreign workers.

The world constantly surprises, and who would have thought that Japan would buck the developed world trend and become more welcoming to immigrants? Yet that’s what Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party is doing as it confronts an aging society and a national labor shortage.

Companies are desperate for workers as Japan’s economy pushes into its seventh year of growth. The population shrinks by more than 300,000 a year due to a low fertility rate, and a tightening labor market has reduced unemployment...